The Richest Woman in America (12 page)

Standing alone in the parlor after the funeral, she noticed a painting that now belonged to her.
The Hunt for an Honest Man
, an eighteenth-century painting of Diogenes attributed to the Italian artist Guido Reni, was one of her favorite pictures. But someone else had already claimed it and tagged it with their name.

Hours later, silent, swathed in black, Hetty listened as Sylvia’s will was read aloud. Her aunt was the richest woman in New Bedford, and she was the only direct heir to the family fortune. Now she learned that Sylvia Ann Howland had assets of over $2 million that would be distributed around the town. Among those included were several widows and friends to whom she left $10,000 each; her employees Eliza and Fally, to whom she gave $3,000 each, and Electa, $5,000. Others were given trusts of $10,000 each. The city of New Bedford benefited in several ways: the Orphans’ Home was given $20,000; the not-yet-completed National Sailors’ Home received $20,000; the poor, aged, and infirm women of the city were to share in a trust of $50,000. Sylvia left $100,000 to the town so it could bring in water and increase its manufacturing; another $100,000 was to be shared between “liberal education,” assumed by town officials to mean access to literature, science, and art, and the public library.

To specific individuals she left the following: to Thomas Mandell, the executor of her will, $200,000; to the three trustees of her will, including Dr. William Gordon, $50,000 each, plus yearly fees for overseeing the estate. In addition, to pacify Edward Robinson she left him $100,000. But in a codicil she revoked the gift to him, thanked Dr. Gordon for his professional and other services, and left him another $50,000, plus $10,000 to his wife and $5,000 to his daughters.

The rest, $1 million, would go to Hetty. But the money would be in trust, not cash; Hetty would receive the income on the investments. The man who would be in charge of the investments was Dr. Gordon. Furthermore, upon her death, the money would not go to Hetty’s children but would revert to the Howland family. The will was signed by Sylvia, witnessed by three people, including a friend of William Gordon’s, and dated September 1863, a year and a half after the agreement
Hetty and Sylvia had written. The codicil, conceived soon after Edward Robinson wrote to Thomas Mandell in 1864, was drawn up by Judge John Williams, the father-in-law of Dr. Gordon.

Devastated, Hetty rested near the piano in the parlor. Close by, she heard two distant relatives snicker, “When Hetty dies we will have a whole greenhouse built onto our house.”

As soon as the house was cleared of guests, she called for Fally, the housekeeper, and demanded the key to her aunt’s private trunk. Rifling through the jewels, the clothes, and the papers, she found two envelopes, one yellow, one white, and pulled them out. Inside the yellow one, she found a copy of her own will; in the other was the will written by Sylvia in 1862. Downstairs, she showed Edward the copy of Aunt Sylvia’s will with a second page attached.

Next, she met with her family’s attorney, William Crapo, and raged like the child he had heard years ago in the dentist’s chair. It was Dr. Gordon, she pointed out, who had drugged her aunt with laudanum and then helped her draw up the deceitful will. Indeed, Hetty would soon discover that William Gordon had actually dictated the codicil.

The money Hetty had been told she had to manage was now being managed by others. Her very self-worth was at stake. Over the course of several weeks she approached members of Sylvia’s staff and tried to persuade them to contest the will. She traveled to the town of Taunton to see the probate judge and, in an act of desperation, tried to bribe him to cancel the will. On all accounts, she lost. Like the great Leviathan, the will would not be harpooned.

Wherever she went, ladies whispered, children pointed, men stared. She was the rich heiress trying to steal New Bedford’s newfound wealth. Gossips snickered and the town’s skunks sprayed her path with ugly rumors. Shopkeepers charged her more, or so it seemed; lawyers’ fees kept mounting; newspapers shouted her name in large print. Shaken by the deaths and the turn of events, and recalling her father’s warning, she worried that someone would try to kill her.

Edward was back in New York and
she was afraid to be alone in the house. She offered a floor to a friend and his wife, who accepted and stayed there. Others came to visit, but at night she climbed the stairs to the fourth-floor attic and, like a frightened animal searching
for safety, she crawled under a bed. “For days I did not leave my room and lived on crackers and raw eggs,” she said. “All the time those schemers were trying to get my money.”

In November, after a trial that made headlines from Boston to Chicago, the will was approved in probate court in New Bedford. One of her father’s sayings rang in her ears: “The poor can’t sue, and if the rich won’t, who is to bring rogues to justice?” One month later, in December 1865, with William Crapo as her leading lawyer and Edward Green at her side, Hetty brought her case against the executors and trustees to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.

“Strange how these millionaire families quarrel among themselves about money,” wrote George Templeton Strong. “Brother alienated from brother, sisters at daggers down with sisters—and all about property, of which everyone of them has more than enough.” He was referring to his clients, the Astors, whose family feuds still continue today. But they were not the first family to find themselves in court, nor would they would be the last. From the continuing saga of the Astor heirs to Henry Ford, who sued his family over his trust fund, to four generations of Pritzkers skirmishing over the family estate, to Curtis Nelson combating his mother and Sumner Redstone’s daughter suing her father, relatives have fought bitter public battles for control of their family fortunes.

Unlike most of the others, Hetty’s turned into
a landmark case. Her suit against the trustees claimed that she was the lawful heir and that her aunt had always wanted her to inherit the money. In fact, Hetty learned, Sylvia had even told her own lawyer that she did not want to write a new will without notifying her niece. It was the deceitful Dr. Gordon, Hetty believed, who had dulled her aunt’s mind and persuaded her to draw up a will against her own wishes. The proof was in the letter, clearly dictated by Hetty, that she had kept attached to Sylvia’s will:

The problem was the signature. It was identical to the one on the will.

      
N
early everyone associated with Sylvia Howland and Hetty Robinson was asked to give a deposition, and their recollections, along with the testimony of the trial, filled a thousand pages of transcripts. Accusations flew back and forth, as Hetty charged the household staff with being covetous and conspiratorial, and they attacked her for being hostile and cruel. But the defendants’ challenge turned the case around. The question they asked was: Who actually signed the letter? They claimed it was forged.

Sylvia’s signature on the second page was identical with the one on the will. In order to prove that this was impossible, the trustees’ three lawyers brought in major experts. To prove that it was entirely possible,
Hetty’s seven attorneys brought in authorities of equal weight: doctors, lawyers, bankers, surveyors, engravers, and experts in penmanship. The courtroom became a platform for speeches of excruciating length, and a class in mathematical proportions.

When the penmanship expert Mr. Crossman testified on Hetty’s behalf, he said that after many months of painstaking research, he was completely convinced that the signature of Sylvia Ann Howland was genuine. But when the trustees’ witness, Mr. Southworth, took the stand, he said that after many months of painstaking evidence, he was completely convinced that the signature was forged.

At the request of Hetty’s lawyers, the noted Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz, chairman of the Department of Natural History and founder of a Harvard museum, was one of the experts to testify. He had examined the signature with his “naked eye,” “with spectacles,” and with low- and high-powered microscopes, he said, and there were no indications it had been traced.

Again, at the request of her counsel, the celebrated Harvard lawyer and doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was called upon. Professor of anatomy and physiology, poet, philosopher, and renowned figure in the arts, he had studied the signature with compound microscopes and declared it definitely had not been traced. The third person they asked to testify, John Quincy Adams, vouched that his grandfather, the sixth American president, had penned his name many times and often the signatures were identical.

In response, the defendants produced numerous witnesses who swore that the signature was a forgery. Of all their experts, the most elaborate testimony came from Benjamin Peirce, the Harvard mathematician, and his son, Charles, who spat out numbers like a whale spouting water. After numerous hours of statistical exploration, they had concluded that such a coincidence could have happened “once in 2,666 millions of millions of millions of times,” he declared. “This number far transcends human experience. So vast an improbability is practically an impossibility.” Without doubt, both Peirces concluded, the signature was forged.

As the seemingly endless lawsuit continued, trailing headlines in its wake, Hetty and Edward traveled back and forth to Massachusetts until, finally, they settled in New York. Although Edward was still
connected to Russell Sturgis & Company, they spent time together on her investments.

The outlook for the country was confusing. With the Civil War now ended, some investors believed the country’s future looked rosy. Miners were uncovering vast deposits of copper, gold, and silver in the West, while huge numbers of people were taking advantage of the Homestead Act and settling the new land. In the East manufacturing was booming, more railroad tracks were being laid, and the transcontinental railroad would soon be hauling freight between the two coasts. It was a buoyant scene.

But as with the canvas of an artist who has changed his mind, a reverse image could be seen on the other side. The devastation of the South, the high debt caused by the war, and the disarray of the Union created a stormy picture. Many people viewed the country’s economy as doubtful. Seeing chaos around the corner, they worried about the stability of the government and refused to pay face value for its greenbacks. Instead, they rushed to gold.

The rules of the marketplace state that for every seller there must be a buyer. The more the public discounted paper money, pushing it down as low as fifty cents on the dollar, the more Hetty bought. This was the start of the contrary investing she followed for the rest of her life: buying when everyone else was selling; selling when everyone else was buying. “I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are crazy to get them. That is, I believe, the secret of all successful business,” she said.

Her philosophy reverberates today in the transactions of Warren Buffett. After a tumultuous period in the stock market, he told his shareholders in 2010: “
We’ve put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. It’s been an ideal period for investors: a climate of fear is their best friend.”

The American government was also finding bargains, paying $7 million to Russia for the vast and vacant territory of Alaska. The deal was arranged by the Russian ambassador, Baron Stoeckel, whose wife had chaperoned Hetty in Saratoga. “What can the country gain by ownership of that desolate, dreary, starved region?” asked George T. Strong. But even if, as he suggested, “the disquisition of territories endears administrations to the people,” the government
refused the offer from Spain to purchase Cuba and Puerto Rico for $150 million.

The appeal of America reached well beyond its shores. To those who were optimistic, huge opportunities could be seen in western mining, eastern manufacturing, and the prospect of railroads crisscrossing the country. In 1866, Edward Green traveled abroad to explore the possibility of attracting European investors seeking a place to put their money.

Hetty was having doubts about the forthcoming marriage. Edward’s travels, the interminable court case, apprehension over matrimony, the clash of their strong personalities, all undoubtedly contributed to tension in their relationship. But a rare and newly discovered note that Hetty sent in 1866 may reveal more. On January 19, 1866, she wrote to the treasurer of the Boston & Providence Railroad: “Please pay Mr. E. H. Green any dividend now due on my stock in your road. Hetty H. Robinson.” Edward was rich, but he had a reputation as a speculator and a gambler. Did he need money? Had he asked his fiancée for a loan? And did he do this more than once? The friction was so great that they broke their engagement several times. And this foretold troubles to come.